Trump speeds rewrite of auto safety rules for the driverless era

The big picture: Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, an enthusiastic supporter of AVs, is moving faster and more deliberately on the issue than any of his predecessors, including Elaine Chao, who was transportation secretary during Trump's first term.

• Duffy, like Trump, sees AVs as part of the larger race to lead the world in artificial intelligence.
• "This is a national security issue. This is an economic issue. This is a safety issue," Duffy said earlier this year at the inaugural National AV Safety Forum in Washington, D.C.

State of play: There are currently no regulations for purpose-built AVs that lack human controls like Tesla's Cybercab or Zoox's bidirectional robotaxi.

• Instead, manufacturers must seek limited exemptions for small fleets of noncompliant vehicles, which the companies say is holding them back from full-scale deployment.

Catch up quick: Previous administrations largely tried to fit AVs into a regulatory framework written for conventional cars.

• The Obama administration relied heavily on voluntary guidance for AVs.
• The first Trump administration updated that guidance but made relatively few changes to the underlying safety standards.
• The Biden administration pursued broader oversight by implementing a new crash reporting system for AVs.

Trump 2.0 is taking a different approach: rewriting the rulebook itself.

• Last week, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration proposed scrapping the requirement for a physical brake pedal in fully autonomous vehicles.
• NHTSA is already drafting new rules that would ditch requirements for windshield defrosters and wipers, transmission shifters and tire-information placards in self-driving cars.
• Steering wheels, still required for now, could be next.

Zoom in: While AVs would no longer require physical brake pedals under the new rule, they must still meet the same stopping distance requirements, NHTSA said.

• The proposal, still open to public comment, is an effort to tear down "pointless barriers to innovative designs," NHTSA Administrator Jonathan Morrison said in a statement.

The AV industry welcomes the new regulations as robotaxis and self-driving trucks begin to roll out across America.

• "We're in the commercialization age of autonomous vehicles," says Jeff Farrah, CEO of the Autonomous Vehicle Industry Association (AVIA). "If the federal government didn't step in and write these rules for the modern era, it would be a dereliction of duty."

Friction point: Safety advocates don't object to removing outdated rules, but they say NHTSA should first set AV safety benchmarks before changing vehicle standards.

• "We don't have independent assurances that the technology is ready for primetime," says Cathy Chase, president of Advocates for Highway and Auto Safety.
• They're also concerned about how passengers and emergency responders would operate an AV if something goes wrong. And remote operators have their own set of safety concerns.
• "There needs to be a mechanism to say, 'I want off of this ride,' before you start taking away controls," says Shaun Kildare, the group's senior director of research.

What we're watching: NHTSA is reviewing petitions from Zoox and Holon, an automated bus company, to deploy noncompliant vehicles. Tesla has not applied for an exemption to deploy its innovative Cybercab.

• Longer term, NHTSA is also working on dedicated performance standards for AVs so such exemptions won't be necessary in the future.